f13.net

Putting together a new pc for the first time (I always bought pre-assembled before), as such I did a bunch of shit wrong (wrong ram, wrong power supply for the graphics card I bought, cpu fan that I bought doesn't fit in the mobo).

Finally fixed all the shit I did wrong, put it all together, put in a Linux boot disk to give it the once-over before installing Windows, and the system freezes upon boot up (never gets to the UI).  By "freezes" I really mean freezes, grapics lock, mouse won't budge, fans idle down.  Only option is turning the power off.

Ok, I figure maybe I burned a crappy disk, let's try installing Windows.  I get 23% of the way through extracting files and the same thing happens.

Please note that I upgraded the bios to the latest version, as I was getting a BIOS message about not recognizing the processor type/version.

Next (ok, a day later after beating my head against the wall trying to figure out what was wrong, reapplying thermal paste, and crying in my cheerios) I try a linux bootable flash drive and this works.  Now I'm definitely thinking it's a heat problem (or an optical drive problem), so I download a system UI linux thingee and a little cpu testing utility called cpuburn-in.  The system UI thingee requires compilation, so I go to compile and WHAM! the system locks up again (mobo never makes a noise upon locking up).

To be thorough, after fixing the flash drive and rebooting, I run 4 instances of cpuburn-in and bring the CPU to 100% for a minute or two without any errors.  Because of this I feel my current problem is not a heat issue.  I use linux to search the windows install disk for files that begin with the letter m.  I kick off acouple of these windows simultaneously.  It doesn't appear to be a optical disk reading error.

So now I put all the peices together and come to the conclusion that something is chewing on the data stream when the machine is asked to write out a new file (during initial linux load from DVD (temp drive on disk, I think), during Windows installation (extracting files after inital file copy), during the "RAM ONLY" linux boot-up that I tried, and when writing files to the flash drive.

I makes a pretty big mess of the FAT when it does this write (whenever I crash the system like this, I have to use another Windows machine to fix the drive, then delete all the old files and replace them to get the boot flash drive to sucessfully boot again).

I call Asus and that dude says, "hunh, never heard of that before".  Then he suggests that I magically pull another motherboard, cpu, graphics card and power supply out of my ass so that I can definitively say which component is giving me the problem.  He says that he's leaning toward it being a motherboard problem (but is also very leery of the power supply).

I call Intel and they lean toward the motherboard.

I call the retailer, they direct me to a CPU support shop, the CPU support short leans more toward the CPU.

I really don't know if it's the CPU or the motherboard, but I really don't think it's anything else.  I don't know enough about mobo or CPU architecture to say what system decides on where files get written to, but it seems like that sub-system is fucking up big time (which then gets read, which then causes the system to lock up hard).

I'd really love to get this right in one shot, I've had these parts for two weeks now and I'm pretty frustrated and kind of depressed.

Anyone have a feel for which part is bad?  Even a gut feeling would be appeciated.

First, tell us what all your parts are.

I started out modestly, really I did.  But it's been 6 years since I was able to do anything PC-wise, and it sort of got away from me.  As mentioned before, I did bone-headed things (like thinking DDR2 would fit in a DDR3 motherboard, and not knowing the new graphic cards require special power supplies... I couldn't find a way to get from the 4 pin cables that came with the 700W supply to the 8 pin connector that the 9800GX requires).

Anyway, I'm playing Linux Freecell on it right now - booted up from the flash drive again, cause it's breaking my hear that it's just sitting there.  Ok, enough rambling, here it is:

Case:	Aluminus Ultra
Power:	ThermalTake Toughpower 1200W
Motherboard	Asus P5E3 Deluxe
CPU:	QX9650 (Core 2 Extreme)
RAM	OCZ Platinum 4096MB PC10666 DDR3 1333MHz (forgot to mention that I ran the RAM test on the Linux DVD, took an hour and a half - passed)
GPU:	EVGA 9800GX2
HD:	Western Digital SE16 500GB
Optical Drive:	Sony DRU 190A (simple drive, says DVD+-R 20X on the box)
Sound Card:	Sound Blaster X-Fi

What are the jumpers set to on the DVD drive and what type of IDE cable are you using on it (the 40-wire or 80-wire type)?

Do you have another video card you can put in the machine?

DVD is set as master, cable is new-fangled (due to the ThermalTake wrapping the wires), but the connector looks like any other IDE connector (translation: I'm too ignorant to answer you question).

More Info:  a buddy mentioned an article where over-clockers were having a problem with getting a similar board to overclock their RAM to the rated speeds (some were talking 1500, some 1333).  So I tried dropping the RAM rate to 1066.  I clicked OK when asked to save, and the CPU hard-powered off.  Now it won't come back on.

I'm pretty sure it's the motherboard (or, at least the motherboard) at this point.

Stick a little pin in or whatever you need to do to reset the BIOS. What are the default CPU and memory settings that come up? You didn't mention you were OCing your system. No wonder you are having trouble!

I'm not overclocking, I cannot even install an operating system on this machine, let alone think about overclocking (which seems to me to be a lot of work for the risk/gain).

A friend of mine was helping me out by doing a search on the P5E3 motherboard and that led him to read a thread on an overclocker's forum that they were having trouble overclocking (or even getting the RAM to clock to what it was rated for) with this motherboard.  He suggested that I try down-clocking from my RAM's rated 1333MHz speed.  Even though I had already run an exaustive RAM test, I'm willing to try anything to figure out what is wrong.  When set the BIOS to 1066MHz, the system shit the bed.

I know that I can reset the BIOS (in theory, I've never actually done it), but I have to return something to get a better idea of what is wrong (I don't have a spare power supply, video card, CPU or motherboard).  The motherobard fucking up just because I dropped the RAM frequency makes it the first candidate in my trouble-shooting by product return.

I was babbling before about wrapped IDE cables, I was thinking about power, not IDE.  I think the one's I was using are the 80-wire (as the other set of IDE cable were the thicker-wired, so I'm assuming they are the 20-wire).

Oh you dropped your FSB speed, not your RAM speed (they are independent). Reset your BIOS and check these standard settings: FSB, CPU frequency and multiplier, memory bus speed, and latency settings

On the cable side of things try the 40-wire cable on the DVD drive -- you could have a bad cable.

Yes, I think I dropped the FSB speed.

As far as the DVD - when I loaded Linux via the usb flash drive, and then tried to compile files on the flash drive, the system froze.  In this scenario there is nothing in the DVD drive (mostly because I changed the boot order and I didn't want to accidentally boot from DVD)

I've heard bad things about the default bios on the board. You might want to try a flash.

This may sound silly or insulting, but I've seen this mistake in first-time builders; when you put the motherboard into the case, did you use the little riser screws to place the motherboard on them, or did you bolt the motherboard to the plate? I ask because the latter can cause a short. In fact, it should immediately short, but sometimes there's a bit of room and you don't get shorted out immediately and presents itself as an intermittent problem.

Other questions are; have you done isolation tests, like taken out the sound card, DVD drives, hard drives, one memory stick and then another stick, etc, to try to isolate the issue? I realise that you can't do that trick with CPU, motherboard or video card, but other factors are worth eliminating.

Risers - check (case comes with a motherboard tray that detaches from the case for attaching the motherboard, it had risers pre-attached)

I sent the motherboard back.  My feeling was that if I cannot even change the bios settings (to a more modest setting) without it freaking out then I want a new motherboard.  I'm hoping this fixes everything, but I won't expect it to fix everything.

Thanks all for the help.

New motherboard arrived in the mail.  Installed it.  Booted it, flashed the BIOS to the latest version. Noticed the the process of flashing the BIOS was more complete this time (no odd power-down at the end).  Started to get excited that it was the mobo afterall.

Booted to Flash drive.  Ran a "make" on some linux system utilities, make ran fine (previously it had choked every time).  Now getting really excited.

Popped windows install in the DVD and restarted.  System froze upon loading the windows loading screen.  Cursed.

For some reason felt like it was the optical drive.  I tried to copy the windows disk to a flash drive (WD 120) to see if I could install from the flash drive.  System again locked up when copying files from optical to flash drive.  Hard drive is now completely removed as a suspect.

I ran to BestBuy and got a SATA DVD +/- R drive.  Installed the new optical drive and restarted, this time with no USB drives connected.  Used the Linux distro DVD first, and for the first time booted all the way into Linux from DVD.

Excitement returned!  Popped windows disk in, and it ran really, really slowly.  More slowly then the first time I tried to install.  Begin worrying.  Finally get to the "extracting files" section, moves decently quickly to 10% then locks up hard.

I'm returning the power supply.  It's either that, the CUP or the RAM.  The RAM passed the 1.5 hour burn-in test, but I know that doesn't always mean what it should.  The CPU will go back next.  Then the RAM.  After that...  well I'm out of ideas after that.

Mostly I'm just writing this as a horror story for people who are toying around with the idea building their own system.  If you are going to do it, you need to be prepared for the worst - or you'll waste a lot of time trying to diagnose what's wrong with what they send you.  It's very frustrating looking at a bunch of parts that should make a really fast computer, but they are nothing more then very expensive parts.

When you used the new dvd drive, did you switch out the cables?

At this point I'm going to assume that Typhon is doing this correctly and setting his computer up while submerged in bleach.

The computer, not him, you ninnies!

The second DVD drive that I got was a SATA DVD drive, so yes, I switched cables (mostly because the first drive was an IDE DVD drive).  Also note that I completely removed the first DVD drive for the installation.

Also note: the new DVD is a Samsung Super WriteMaster DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM (and double layer), $60 at BestBuy and it runs super quiet, I've never heard a dvd make less noise in computer (I'm not sure why I'm pimping for this drive, I was just really impressed with how quiet it was, Linux start-up messages started popping up on screen and it was like magic cause I couldn't hear it).

Honestly ever since I/O drives became dvd/cdr/cdw/fucking six other things...  They have sucked.  I've had several random ass total fuck ups which only happen when I'm reinstalling windows because beyond that I never use a cd ever.

I am going to go with RAM or PSU, both of those going bad can lead to very unpredictable lock ups. While both being easy to test if you have extras, the problems of ether going bad can be fairly hard to diagnose due to the unreliability of the issues they cause.

In all the years that i have built computers i have never had to go through the chaos that you are going through. I am sad for you.

This was my thinking as well.  Fortunately it occured to me that I do have a spare for the RAM - I ordered two 2GB sticks, I don't have to put both in at the same time.  Since I'm still waiting on a rerturn code from the seller for the PSU so I'll try that tonight.

@Pennilenko: thanks, I appreciate it.

Ok, so I reconnect the powersupply, but I'm in a hurry so I only use one SATA connector this time - it's powering both the HD and the DVD drive.  I put one RAM stick in and boot it up and Windows installs.

Oddly, I'm not psyched, I'm kinda bummed.  I put the other stick in and redo the installation and it installs.  Now I'm only kinda bummed.  Next I'll connect the DVD and the HD on two different connectors and plug in my USB devices.  I might even reinstall the IDE DVD.  At this point I'm 95% sure it's the PSU, but it would be nice to be 100%

Once thing that's making me smile alittle - I'm writing this from the new machine.  At least I can get back to a configuration where I can do something with it.

So basically one of the SATA power connections is bad, yes? I'd replace the PSU, but at least you have a working machine till you swap it out.

 :uhrr:

I have no clue what happened.  It's all working.  Everything.

Only thing I did different is that I moved the RAM to new slots, and fiddled with cables (not that I used any different cables, just that I put them into different places).

Happy it's all running, but feeling like it's a bomb ready to go off at any point.  Re-installed windows 5 times with different configurations, finally I put everything in (sound card, old/new DVDs drives, everything) and it still installed and has been working well.

Fucking unreal.

And this is with the brand new motherboard? How many ram banks do you have? Its possible you had the ram in the wrong bank pair?

4 RAM banks, 2 RAM sticks (each stick is 2 GB).  I first up them in right next to eachother.  BIOS (correctly) showed 4GB.  As soon as I started having problems I ran a mem-test utility from the SLAX distro.  mem-test showed no errors.

Yesterday I put in only one stick - where you put the stick in seems to make no difference as far as the system info is concerned.  After sucessful installation, I replaced that stick with the other stick and was also able to install sucessfully.  You know the rest.

It's worth mentioning that I did read something online that seemed to say people were having more "luck" with the black banks, which seemed like bullshit to me, but now that I think of it, last night I put them in the black banks to keep them seperated from eachother.  I did this to give them a chance to disipate more heat- the banks are laid out with a organge/black pair close together, and then another orange/black pair so either putting them in both black or both orange gives the most spacing.

I still don't understand what I did differently.  Even the IDE DVD drive works like a champ (although it is loud).

That may have been your problem right there. Some motherboards are picky about making sure you're using the A slots or the B slots, but not one in each. Check your motherboard manual.

Possibly stupid question, even though you have your problem resolved:

Are you using Vista Prem 64 bit?

If so, I had issues during the install (getting 0x0000007E errors (maybe with more or less zeros) with 4 GB of RAM.  Once I removed 2 GB, and continued with the install, it went fine.  Patched it, then put in the other 2GB, and everything was shiny.  Come to find out, I wasn't the only one that had the same problems.

Yeah, I had that issue too. Oddly, it installed just fine with 8GB.

I'm using 32-bit Windows, although your experience sounds similar to mine.

Engels: everything I read seems to indicate that it doesn't matter what slot you put the ram in (which is a completely new experience for me, previously there was always a very definite order that the RAM wanted to be in - but the BIOS would yell at you right quick if you didn't do it right).  Course, this doesn't mean I read the right things

I've had boards where it mattered, but BIOS didn't complain.  Things just acted wonky yet nearly impossible to diagnose.

I've never been very impressed with Asus documentation, and come to think of it, the Asus boards I have had in the past were particularly poor about memory slot assignment, with confusing language, and I only knew where the ram went based on prior knowledge.

If you want to use dual channel memory and you aren't filling all the slots it does matter which slots you put the RAM into.

I see it now. Internal naming scheme is wonky, documentation is wonky, and BIOS messages are wonky - and by "wonky" I mean something that I should have read more carefully.  Disheartening to realize that I probably could have avoided most of this issues if I had read more carefullly (first motherboard acted completely differently though, which is to say poorly, so I'm not sure that I could have avoided all of them).

It's worth noting that I currently don't have the RAM in the recommended configuration and everything is working fine.  It's also worth noting that the recommended configuration is the exact opposite of what I did to start.  At this point I'm afraid to change to the recommended configuration, but I'm more afraid not to.

Thanks again for all help

More weirdness:

1) I put the RAM into the recommended configuration (both in the B-slots, which are furthest from the CPU) and this caused my machine to lockup upon rebooting (in the same way it was locking up when I was trying to install).  Finally making sense of what I read somewhere, "user are having more luck putting RAM into the black slots (which would be A2 and B2).

2) Same part of the documentation that tells me to put RAM sticks in B1 and B2 also says, "if you use a 32-bit operating system, it is recommended that you use as most 3GB of RAM".  Fast forward to me playing WoW - I play for a bout 15 mins and the system locks up.  I take 2GB out of the syste, and it plays just fine.  I'm guessing WoW is having these issues more then other games (HG:L, for instance) because WoWs textures are so much larger then other games.

So, for now, I guess I leave the system with just 2GB of RAM and wait for the 32-bit patch to Vista that allows it to address more then 2GB of RAM (or more support comes out for 64-bit Vista, in which case I install that).

So much fun!

Which P5E3 motherboard are you using?

Interesting, the recommended memory slots for 2 DIMMs is opposite from the P5E3 board (that one recommends the "black" slots). Wonder why those are reversed. Don't see where it's telling you to put them in B1 and B2, though. That would disable dual channel memory.

Edit: disable

Could be I'm reading the manual wrong (done a ton wrong already, so it wouldn't be a surprise).  Here's what the book says (yellow is from the book, white or blue is me, the table isn't cooperating, color-wise):

You may install 512MB, 1GB, 2GB unbuffered ECC, non-ECC DDR3 DIMMs into the DIMM sockets.

Recommended memory configuration (shows a graph, which I'll try to reproduce)

Channel A - DIMM_A1 AND DIMM_A2 - (these are the ones nearest the CPU, the "2" slots are black)
Channel B - DIMM_B1 AND DIMM_B2 - (these are the ones nearest the CPU, the "2" slots are black)

	Sockets
Mode	DIMM_A1	DIMM_B1	DIMM_A2	DIMM_B2
Single Channel	-	-	-	populated-
Single Channel	-	populated	-	-
Dual Channel (1)	-	populated	-	populated
Dual Channel (2)	populated	populated	populated	populated

[/color]

The package that the RAM came in says it's Dual-Channel.  The chart seems to say that I shouldn't be putting dual-channel RAM in as a single chip?  Am I reading that right?

How I read it last night was:  If I have a single chip, I should put it either in B1 or B2.  If I have two chips, I should be filliing the B channel first.

Filling the B-channel first causes issues (as does filling the A channel first).  Filling the "2" slots first has been the only configuration that works with two chips in - but as mentioned I was having issues with WoW.  Currently I have the DIMM_B2 slot filled, and that is working the best so far (no issues with WoW).

Hmmmmm.

Orange and black? Shouldn't the orange match the black. As in, fill in the two orange (which I would assume is for dual-channel) and leave the blacks empty.

I could be wrong, but let's say I doubt it since I populated an ASUS board correctly 2 days ago that had 6 slots.

(http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/13-131-218-05.jpg)

Also, at least you aren't having storage issues:

(http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/9906/directoryisnotemptycf0.png)

What the fuck does that even mean?

Download a newer manual.

Means you need to run scan disk so you can delete siht that is in that directory, but not properly in the FAT.

It means something has that folder locked. Try something like this:

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

Or just reboot your machine.

Schilds Directory Issue:  Well, I recently had the same issue with the Flash drive, and it was idenpendent of what machine I had it plugged into, so I assumed what I typed above - the FAT was fucked up, something was in the directory, but was not properly in the index (or vice-versa, but if it was in the index, it would appear in a directory-viewing application, such as explorer).

P5E3:  You're right - new manual says to populate the orange first.  I'll try that and see if WoW fails.

Enjoy WoW, I guess. It should run fine.

It did, thanks again to everyone.

One of your sticks of RAM is bad/flaky.  Keep in mind that the OS goes resident (including all of the memory-mapped registers, some portions of the video BIOS, etc) into fixed addresses in the addressable space of the CPU.  Hence memory testing routines do not actually cover all of the RAM located on the stick.  In other words, if you do read-write testing and you overwrite the code of the test which is in RAM, you cannot test any further and your system dies.

Anytime you run into issues like this, swap the sticks and re-run the memory test.  This will move the memory 'hole' to the other stick and allow you to test the first one (which was previously storing the OS code, parameters, etc).

What if you're using a bootable ram tester, such as memtest86, off a CD or floppy? I know that it has a small 'OS' to enable the program to execute, but would it have the same effect you describe here?

I've had flaky RAM that passed all of the various memtest utilities out there.  It would randomly reboot\crash with no warning every few hours, didn't necessarily need to be heavy usage or anything.  It just had an area that it didn't like using.  The utilities are useful, but they aren't the end-all of RAM functionality testing.  The only thing that worked was putting another stick in the machine.  I put that stick into 6 different machines with various motherboards for several months as an experiment back when I ran a computer lab and they all had problems with it despite passing several memory checker programs.  Ended up being a conversation piece on a desk.

The problem wasn't with the ram, it was with the manual and the person reading the manual (and not getting the fixed version of the manual from asus.com).

In short, yes.  Regardless of the medium where the files are stored, the testing program will still go resident into RAM and be run from there.

It's just good practice to always swap sticks and run the test again, if you are using more than one stick.

As for the mobo design, that's just awful.  You should be able to put any stick in any slot and it should work.

A new exciting problem:  system locks up hard, a squealing sound usually coming from the headphones.

History:
First time it happened it was early in the morning and I was browsing in IE 7.  I am using a USB trackball (LogiTech Trackman marble, pretty old), and I flicked the scroll wheel a bit harder then usual, making it spin fast.

Second time and every subsequent time it happend I was using my Nostromo n52 to launch my druid into the air in WoW.  When I do this, I press a couple buttons simultaneously (and quickly).  It's happened 3 more times, all with this same setup.  I play Hellgate, COD4, CoX all with the nostromo, so far no problem.

Anyone having similar lock-up problems with USB devices and Vista 32-bit?

What happens if you disable the sound in-game?

I have one USB port -on the case- (not on the motherboard back panel) that will short out the whole machine into a lock up when I use certain periferals, wether its my digital camera or my joystick. I've checked the wire connection to the motherboard from the case, but it looks well seated, but I think that over the years, one of the cables must have become unstuck from the connector or something.

Is the USB port you are using for the device on the motherboard backpanel or one of those on the case you have to connect to the motherboard through a cable?

n52 --> Belkin Hub --> Motherboard USB.
Mouse --> Motherboard USB

I just moved both (n52 is in a new slot, hub is in a new usb slot), I'll se if that changes anything.

I also try disabling WoW sound and see if I can get it to repeat.  It's confusing to me that none of the other games are having this issue.  (I also haven't had a repeat while browsing).  For reference, I'm using a Creative X-Fi Gamer card, onboard sound is disabled through the BIOS.

Lockup isn't like a normal looping lockup (were a sound-bite will loop), it's more like the last note that was playing is amplified and never stops.

For some reason I feel like I want to blame Vista, but I'm not sure why.

Moving the USB connectors to other ports may have worked - not a single lock-up last night.  Seems like they are fine for harddrives, but not so fine for spastic finger-flinging.  Thanks much for the suggestion.

Edit: I got spastic while spelling spastic

I hade the same kind of problems when I first connected my USB headset. It caused all kinds of bizarre behaviour. Moving to a new USB port solved all of them.

100% sure it was a specific set of USB ports as I locked up hard the minute I went to type on the keyboard while playing WoW last night (keyboard was only usb device left in those ports), moved them and haven't had an issue since.

Issue is kind of odd, because in all other games in that configuration the ports/devices worked just fine (which leads me to believe it's a driver issue, and not (only) a hardware issue).

It's possible it's a driver issue. Some motherboards use multiple controllers to support all their USB ports. E.g. the main chipset might only support 4 USB ports while a secondary controller is used to handle another 4.

I've always had USB issues with my deluxe.  Computer loves to hard lock if I use a USB device during the initial Express Gate screen.  Haven't had any issues with my memory but all 4 banks are filled.  Best of luck, in any case!

Well I was wrong, it wasn't a specific port that is having issues because I locked up again last night in COD4 (although I seem to have less issues through the recently-used ports).  When I did, I notice that the Belkin hub that I was using to connect the nostromo was hot, so I switched them out (I have two of these hubs.  They are both powered, the hot one was the main, another hub and the nostromo were connected into main, with a 6-in-1 connected to the cool hub).

So I completely removed the hot hub and run only the nostromo through the cool hub (which seems like it continues to be pretty cool, only getting slightly warm).  I'd be very happy if this were the issue, cause it would mean I've found the problem, and the ports on the mobo were probably ok.

Your adventures have convinced me not to attempt to build a PC from scratch. This kind of stuff would have driven me wild with frustration long ago. It's worth spending money not to have to go through it.

His case was sort of an outlier. Normally, everything goes together smoothly, the system works, and you save a pile of money.

Other than laptops, I can't see myself ever buying a pre-made.

I continue to be plagued by the USB prompted lockup.  This morning while going through all things Vista I found that I hadn't actually completed the sp1 install like I thought I had, so I completed that.

Googling for others with the same issue it seems like Vista Ultimate comes up fairly often (which is what I have, cause I'm a moron who doesn't like to keep his money).  I do notice that the date of the last posts I seem to see ends in January of this year.  Again my fingers are crossed that maybe this (Vista SP1 will resolve the issue).

@Reg - I'd have to agree with rattran, with the caveat that you can avoid this stuff by doing a good amount of research and reading - I experienced many issues because I was ignorant (ordering wrong stuff and not checking and reading the latest mobo manual), some issues due to hardware (motherboard fucking up proper during bios flashing) and some due to crappy choise of operating system (just stick with XP until people stop bitching about Vista).

That said, if you can't be bothered to do all that research, it's definitely worth your while to buy a pre-built system.  I'd also advise that you don't get a high-end system, they tend to have just-release hardware and drivers that often need a bit more baking in the oven then are worth the bit of extra performance they provide.

NECRO: ARISE FROM YE SHALLOW DEEP GRAVE!!!

Thought I'd update this in case someone else ever has as many issues as I did when building a new machine and this can in someway help, or is just looking for schadenfreudder (fodder for schadenfreude).

Two updates to this:

1) My instability problem was a combination of motherboard + specific set of RAM.  Both were fine when playing with other partners, the combination were less then fine.  Solution was to increase the RAM voltage and decrease the RAM clockspeed.  Finally after a year and a month I had a stable system (found this information on the Asus site, with my motherboard as a topic). 

So, if you are having random system lockups (complete lockup, not blue screen of death, just sudden and complete lockup of the system that requires a cycling of the power.  frequently accompanied by looping sound) - try increasing RAM voltage and dropping the RAM clockspeed.

2) Yesterday evening I turned on the machine and heard a long beep, followed by three short beeps.  That motherboardese for, "your video card has shit the bed".  Moved it to the other slot (motherboard supports SLI) and no luck - seems definite that that video card died an early death.  I was positive that I had registered the card with EVGA, so I went to the site to see what type of warranty they had (although I was afraid it was just 1 year.  It was 1 year, unless you had registered the product within one month, in which case it was a limited lifetime warranty.

Turns out I didn't actually register the product, I had just registered on the website.  So I got to receive EVGA email for a year... but I now have a dead card 2 months after the end of warranty.  Sure have had crappy luck with this go round of computers.  I used to be pretty religious about filling out warranties but ended up feeling like it was just a trick to get contact info for advertising.

Evga once declined to honor a warranty, telling me that I hadn't registered the motherboard properly on their site. No explanations as to what was improper. Which is why I won't buy evga anymore.

...


I R WIN??  :grin:

You wouldn't believe the shit that gets soldered onto PCB's and sold as a DIMMs in the retail space nowadays.  High quality RAM is worth the extra $$ IMHO.  This trick is finding out who sells it (almost nobody)!

Glad you got it ironed out!

RAM is OCZ, which I thought was decent/high quality (it sure was expensive).  And since I've upped the voltage and dropped (1333 to 1000MHz) RAM is fine, no specific issues or defects with the RAM.  The problem that people were reporting seemed common to this motherboard and the OCZ DDR RAM.  Guessing - this RAM pulls a bit more juice then everyone else's, so it's necessary to jack the voltage up a bit to keep it stable.

EVGA is trying to give me a "one time replacement" as we speak, so I can't really complain about them either (I really didn't fill out the warranty info, I just registered on the website).

My OCZ 1333 ram won't even boot at 1066 whatever I set the voltage too. Just gave up and reverted to the default 800.

FYI, OCZ is trash. I have seen problems with their ram in the past. A company trying to be a big player is really frustrating sometimes, for the consumer.

I only buy Corsair, personally, but I would not argue with someone buying Crucial either. I'm sure others here can think of other reputable brands.


Also, I still don't like your PSU; ThermalTake is trash. Unfortunately, beyond SeaSonic (or Corsair units utilizing their design) or Antec, I'm at a loss to think of other decent brands.


EDIT: What I mean to say is that in my experience (note: I'm not a pro at this), PC building is one activity that really exemplifies the maxim that you get what you pay for; it is ALWAYS worth the extra money to buy the better brands. Sure, sometimes you'll be ok buying some off-brand, but I don't think it's worth the risk. I'm sure I'm not the only person who almost wanted to vomit or cry at some point when faced with a mysterious major PC problem.

This is more likely referring to the fact that the video card is going to map its internal ram into the 32 bit memory space. The operating system as well probably reserves some memory address space (Linux reserves the top Gb of memory). So the issue would be not being able to access all the 4Gb of ram you bought rather than it being an issue. That all vanishes with a 64 bit system of course.

In any case glad you eventually solved it all. I've never had that many issues with a PC build but it only takes one "mostly working" component to make things painful.

Asus documentation sucks too. And on my latest build their bios updater was broken and thus did nothing more than give me false confidence I actually had a recent bios. That caused me lots of video card lockups :/

Kingston, Corsair, Crucial, or so cheap you don't care if it fries.

I will only buy one of those three brands with Corsair being my favorite.

Fuck evga, buy through newegg and use them for RMA. When I built my computer in 2007, I got a bum 8800gtx from evga. After a bunch of bullshit they finally sent me a refurb of a lesser 8800 model. I demanded the original card back, they refused.

Called up newegg, explained what happened and they took back the refurb card and refunded me full price for the original card and I was able to buy another one from newegg that day, which has been fine since.

Fuck evga.

Also agree with the memory branding. I prefer Crucial, even though I finally fried a stick by pushing too much voltage through it playing around. Good excuse to upgrade to 4GB now that it's stupid cheap, I paid $47 for 4GB, ffs. But other than that, crucial/micron has never let me down, been building computers since the mid-90s

Corsair > all when it comes to memory.  Their PSU's have gotten high marks at sites like [h]ard but I prefer Seasonic if I can afford it.

Having a cheap PSU is probably the worst mistake you can make.  Typhoon you really should consider swapping that out asap.

I've been impressed by Patriot lately. Take care with the timings on the product - their offerings do run from 'below average' to 'great'.

I'm currently running 8gb of Patriot ddr2 as it was nearly free as a Fry's special. I was surprised at how fast and stable it's been. Not bad for $40 AR

And I've had mixed results with OCZ, sometimes it's great, but I've encountered several problems with different boards. Crucial/Corsair rarely disappoints, but you pay for that reliability.

Ok, so it looks like the consensus is:

RAM: Corsair, Crucial, Kingston (in that order)
PSU: Seasonic

I've started watching the price on Seasonic PSUs and Corsair RAM (would be nice to run at 1333 and not hot), at the very least it would have been helpful to have a spare to swap in to rule out a particular component.

Note: EVGA is coming through with a "one time replacement", which will sit on the shelf as another replacement (I picked up a 295 GTX from BFG - I really like this card).  So it's kind of hard for me to be mad at them, especially since the GX2 buzz was that the product had issues regardless of who the retailer was

Make sure you register that BFG card.

The 295 is pretty obnoxious. Have fun. :awesome_for_real:

I went Corsair RAM and PSU 620w this last goround.  No issues 18 months in. 

I've built several systems exclusively with GSkill ram, and I've never had a problem with it before. It's usually one of the best priced namebrand ram on Newegg.

GSkill has been about the same as OCZ for me. Lots of odd compatibility problems where it should be fine.

I have the same PSU and it's totally worth the money, especially because of the 5 year warranty  :awesome_for_real: